Barron Trump bombarded his secret “sweetheart” with late-night texts and calls, a court has heard.
Trump, now 19, had last year developed what he described as a “very close” online relationship with a 22-year-old woman from London. She referred to Donald Trump’s six-foot-seven son as “sweetheart” in an exchange that led to a fight last January with her then-boyfriend, Matvei Rumiantsev, a court in London has heard.
The bizarre court case, 3,500 miles from home, offers an unprecedented insight into the life of Trump’s youngest son. It comes weeks after it was revealed that he has taken “dating advice” from a close associate of the misogynist internet influencer brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, and had spoken to Andrew Tate.
Giving evidence at a trial in East London on Friday, Russian-born Rumiantsev, 22, who is accused of attacking the woman during their tempestuous relationship, said he believed his ex-girlfriend’s feelings for Barron were not sincere.
“She was frankly leading him on,” Rumiantsev told jurors in a tense exchange at Snaresbrook Crown Court.
When the judge halted Rumiantsev to remind him that the case was about whether he had assaulted the woman, and her ‘relationship’ with Barron wasn’t relevant, the former wrestler said that Barron hadn’t been the “root” of their arguments.
Rumiantsev, standing around six-feet-six and wearing a full blue suit, told the court, “I’m being portrayed as a highly jealous person who loses his temper. I can’t say I wasn’t jealous. I considered her actions towards him wrong. It wasn’t fair either to him or to me.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rumiantsev is accused of offenses including assault and two counts of rape, as well as intentional strangulation, actual bodily harm, and attempting to pervert the course of justice—charges he denies. The woman cannot be named, but jurors have heard she struck up a trans-Atlantic connection with Barron after meeting him on social media.
Barron’s involvement in the case came after he alerted the police in London. The president’s son said he saw the woman being assaulted by Rumiantsev when the pair answered a FaceTime call at 2.30 AM local time.
The court was shown messages in which the woman addressed Barron as “sweetheart.”
Rumiantsev told the court that the affectionate nickname had stoked disagreements between the couple. He confirmed that a message between him and his ex could be translated as: “You started calling him sweetheart, I felt so unwell.”
At the center of the prosecution’s case is an incident on January 18, 2025—two days before Trump’s inauguration—when Barron said he believed he saw the woman being attacked during a FaceTime call and contacted emergency services.
A transcript released by prosecutors shows Barron telling the operator: “She’s getting beat up,” and clarifying that it was happening on “a video call.”
The same read-through also captures a tense exchange in which the operator admonished Trump for his tone: “Can you stop being rude and actually answer my questions,” before Barron responded: “Sorry for being rude.”
In a later email to investigators dated May 2, jurors heard that Barron described what he saw as “very brief indeed but indeed prevalent,” and said the call initially connected to “a shirtless man with darkish hair” for “maybe one second” before flipping to the crying woman. Barron said he had been told by the woman, “who I am very close with,” that the man “was giving her difficulty for a long time.”
The woman later told a court that Barron’s call and intervention had “saved” her life.
The incident unfolded on the same evening Barron joined his family for a private reception and fireworks at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, kicking off the inauguration weekend program. Earlier that day, photographers captured him in Florida boarding an Air Force aircraft alongside his parents.
Images from the trip show Barron towering over Donald and mom, Melania, his expression unsmiling in each shot. The Trumps were reported to have spent the night at Blair House, the official guest residence across from the White House.
Rumiantsev has offered his own account of that night. He said Barron was repeatedly FaceTiming the woman that evening, and claimed he answered one call at around 9:30 p.m. Eastern while the couple were in a drunken argument after drinking Korean wine and whiskey.
“Throughout the day, she had missed calls from him,” Rumiantsev told the court. “The U.S. is in a different time zone, so he was calling her in the morning, and then he apparently slept, and then he was calling in the evening.
“He was quite persistent. It was hard for me not to be jealous. But at that point, at the 18th of January, I was quite used to her receiving calls from him.”
Rumiantsev told the court he had finally picked up because he thought it might jolt her into calming down, and that she would not “behave like this in front of someone else, especially Barron Trump.”
Prosecutors have also pointed the jury to earlier flashpoints in the relationship. Jurors heard evidence about a November 3, 2024, incident when the woman called police alleging Rumiantsev broke her air fryer, with a body-worn camera recording in which she described him as jealous and “controlling of who I can be friends with.”
Rumiantsev denied being controlling, but told the court the “reference” to that friend was again to Barron.
The case has dragged Barron’s private life back into public view. The Beast has previously reported on the intense scrutiny around the first son’s romantic life, including Donald Trump’s own remarks in October 2024 that Barron had not “had a girlfriend yet,” and later Fox News chatter and gossip-industry speculation about his dating prospects as he studied at New York University.
It was reported in December that Barron had been drawn into “manosphere” circles and is an admirer of Tate, the influencer accused in Romania of rape and human trafficking and facing separate rape and trafficking charges in the U.K., all of which the Tate brothers deny.
Tate associate Justin Waller told The New York Times he has acted as a “big brother” to Barron and facilitated at least one Zoom conversation between Barron and Tate while Barron was being fitted for a suit, during which they discussed their view that Romanian prosecutors were trying to silence the brothers.
The trial continues.
